Real-time BRDF editing in complex lighting

Abstract

Current systems for editing BRDFs typically allow users to adjust analytic parameters while visualizing the results in a simplified setting (e.g. unshadowed point light). This paper describes a real-time rendering system that enables interactive edits of BRDFs, as rendered in their final placement on objects in a static scene, lit by direct, complex illumination. All-frequency effects (ranging from near-mirror reflections and hard shadows to diffuse shading and soft shadows) are rendered using a precomputation-based approach. Inspired by real-time relighting methods, we create a linear system that fixes lighting and view to allow real-time BRDF manipulation. In order to linearize the image's response to BRDF parameters, we develop an intermediate curve-based representation, which also reduces the rendering and precomputation operations to 1D while maintaining accuracy for a very general class of BRDFs. Our system can be used to edit complex analytic BRDFs (including anisotropic models), as well as measured reflectance data. We improve on the standard precomputed radiance transfer (PRT) rendering computation by introducing an incremental rendering algorithm that takes advantage of frame-to-frame coherence. We show that it is possible to render reference-quality images while only updating 10% of the data at each frame, sustaining frame-rates of 25-30fps.